When Kassia Krozser referred to the forthcoming Apple tablet as the “Apple Unicorn” I emailed her to ask if she knew something that no civilian outside of Apple knows. Or was it a joke? If it was a joke it was a damn good one.

It’s a joke. Someone started referring to the tablet as a Unicorn because no one had ever seen it but everyone was ascribing magical properties to it.

I fell for it because “Unicorn” happens to be a splendid name for an e-book reader, especially compared to the litany of dumb ones we have been reciting for the last year or two. “The name has, oddly (or not), found traction in all sorts of media,” Kassia writes, “and there’s even a Unicorn hashtag on Twitter.”

Of course, if the name of Apple’s tablet truly turns out to be Unicorn the joke would be on Apple. But right now, Las Vegas money is strongly behind “iSlate”. Forty-eight hours or so from now we’ll all know.

Richard Curtis

Kassia Krozser, whose Booksquare blog (in her own words) “dissects the publishing industry with love and skepticism,” has dissected Nat Sobel’s plea to publishers to withhold e-book reprints of hardcovers, and she bluntly declares “You are wrong.”

In a two-part posting, Responding to Nat Sobel, Cranky-Style, she amplifies on her judgment. Sobel’s statement was originally published on the E-Reads website and has provoked such publishers as Hachette, Simon & Schuster and Harper to declare that they will delay e-book reprints for months after publication of hardcovers. You can read about those policy announcements here.

Sobel and his partner Judith Weber have individually replied to Krozser in comments on her website. Says Sobel: “The economy of all publishing is at stake here for both publisher, agent and author. Keeping hardcover books alive [we are the only country in the world with a viable hardcover market] is essential to the intellectual health of this country.” He adds: “I love electronic books. I have a Kindle. And use it. The story behind all of this is fear of survival.”

Judith Weber draws a parallel to DVDs of motion pictures:

These comments seem to ignore the fact that Mr. Sobel never suggested that books not be released in electronic format, only that their release be delayed beyond the period of the initial hardcover release. When the mass market paperback business was thriving, millions of readers waited to buy books when they came out (usually a year later than hardcover release), but they didn’t refuse to buy the books they wanted to read. If readers today don’t want to pay the higher price of hardcovers, they will, similarly, wait a few months until the books are available electronically, or a little longer until they can find them in paperback reprint. To cite the movie analogy again, many people wait until DVDs are released, rather than paying the high cost of a night out at the movies, but they still see the movies they want to see.

You can read their remarks in full, plus many more incisive comments, on Booksquare here.

Whichever side of the argument you take, we all passionately agree that this is about the future of the book business and the survival of authors.

Richard Curtis